murray lachlan young : radio
Current Activity:
Resident Poet, Saturday Live, BBC Radio 4
Friday Poet, Shaun Keaveny Breakfast Show, BBC 6Music
Murray Lachlan Young is one of the UK’s best known performance poets.
His 19-year career as a “live poet” has spanned the worlds of rock and roll, publishing, feature film, theatre, television and radio.
2008 saw his profile in good shape, with commissions from the BBC Two’s Newsnight, Radio 4’s The Today Programme and The Guardian newspaper. Murray also made Pick of the Week with a Ladbroke Productions commission for a new folk ballad in the style of The Loneliness of the Goalkeeper and The Thong, performed on Radio 4’s Bespoken Word.
Murray is a resident poet on Radio 4’s Saturday Live, which won UK Speech Programme 2008 at the Sony Awards. Over on BBC Radio 2, his poem for Keith Richards, If You’re Gonna Go, Keith, garnered strong backing from its repeated broadcasts on the Radcliffe & Maconie Show.
Murray’s live shows enjoyed continuing success in 2008, with two runs at the Soho Theatre and a rolling regional tour of Modern Cautionary Tales For Children.
With over 100,000 hits on his YouTube site, Murray was one of YouTube’s Top Ten highest rated comedy performers in the UK for twenty weeks.
In 2000, Murray played the lead role of ‘Monsieur’ (Philippe d’Orleans, the brother of Louis XIV) in Roland Joffé’s Vatel, alongside such luminaries as Gérard Depardieu, Uma Thurman and Tim Roth. His other film credits include Plunkett & Macleane (1999), in which he played the “Gallows Poet”, and About a Boy (2002).
Young made his name on the underground music and cabaret scene of mid-nineties London, transfixing audiences with his unique stage presence and satirical angle on the pop zeitgeist. His first proper gig was a residency on BBC Radio 4’s Kaleidoscope, but it was his live style as a stand-up poet that brought him to the attention of the music industry.
Having signed a deal in 1995 with Herb Albert and Jerry Moss’s new label Almo Sounds, Murray was put together with the band Morcheeba to record their now legendary trip-hop version of Young’s poem Simply Everyone’s Taking Cocaine.
Producer Markus Dravs, whose credits include Brian Eno’s Nerve Net and Björk’s Homogenic, was drafted in to produce Murray’s first studio album, with instrumental accompaniment supplied by guests ranging from electro-punk outfit Shriekback to folk artists Steafán Hannigan and Oscar O’Lochlainn.
Soon after this, Murray was given his own series on MTV USA, recording a series of short films for the American market.
BBC Two coverage of his appearance at Glastonbury moved his profile higher ... and as the press caught wind that he had signed an unprecedented million-pound-plus record deal with EMI UK, he became a headline international media story.
Highlights of the ensuing years included a BBC Two television special, Vice and Verse, a book deal with Transworld Publishers for Casual Sex and Other Verse (1997), a writer/performer role in a high budget advertising campaign for Virgin Atlantic and a role as “Gallows Poet” in the cult classic movie Plunkett & Macleane.
He toured with The Pet Shop Boys, The Pretenders, Julian Cope and Morcheeba, played the main stages of numerous pop festivals including Glastonbury, Phoenix and T In The Park, and released three studio albums, working with Shriekback, Brix Smith, Martin Chambers (The Pretenders), Jonathan Perkins (Dave Stewart And The Spiritual Cowboys), multi-Platinum producer Chris Thomas and Jools Holland. Territories in which his work has been released include Italy, Holland, Germany and USA.
In 2002, Mark Rylance, then artistic director of Shakespeare’s Globe, commissioned Young to write a prologue to the stage adaptation of Lucius Apuleius’ mock-epic Latin novel The Golden Ass, and a poem commemorating the theatre’s relocation to its current home.
Under the auspices of Brunel University’s iF-festival, Young was commissioned to write a series of poems for composer Peter Wiegold’s Damn Braces, inspired by William Blake’s The Marriage of Heaven and Hell. The piece had its London debut in 2005 as part of Hot – An Infernal Cabaret, a collaborative project created by Young with Wiegold’s ensemble notes inégales.
Upcoming projects include a book of humourous children’s poetry, The Nine Dead Williams, and a memoir, provisionally entitled The Strange Case of the Million Pound Poet.
Murray's Official Website:
murraylachlanyoung.com
download to print murray's bio as a pdf file (3.3MB)
Resident Poet, Saturday Live, BBC Radio 4
Friday Poet, Shaun Keaveny Breakfast Show, BBC 6Music
Murray Lachlan Young is one of the UK’s best known performance poets.
His 19-year career as a “live poet” has spanned the worlds of rock and roll, publishing, feature film, theatre, television and radio.
2008 saw his profile in good shape, with commissions from the BBC Two’s Newsnight, Radio 4’s The Today Programme and The Guardian newspaper. Murray also made Pick of the Week with a Ladbroke Productions commission for a new folk ballad in the style of The Loneliness of the Goalkeeper and The Thong, performed on Radio 4’s Bespoken Word.
Murray is a resident poet on Radio 4’s Saturday Live, which won UK Speech Programme 2008 at the Sony Awards. Over on BBC Radio 2, his poem for Keith Richards, If You’re Gonna Go, Keith, garnered strong backing from its repeated broadcasts on the Radcliffe & Maconie Show.
Murray’s live shows enjoyed continuing success in 2008, with two runs at the Soho Theatre and a rolling regional tour of Modern Cautionary Tales For Children.
With over 100,000 hits on his YouTube site, Murray was one of YouTube’s Top Ten highest rated comedy performers in the UK for twenty weeks.
In 2000, Murray played the lead role of ‘Monsieur’ (Philippe d’Orleans, the brother of Louis XIV) in Roland Joffé’s Vatel, alongside such luminaries as Gérard Depardieu, Uma Thurman and Tim Roth. His other film credits include Plunkett & Macleane (1999), in which he played the “Gallows Poet”, and About a Boy (2002).
Young made his name on the underground music and cabaret scene of mid-nineties London, transfixing audiences with his unique stage presence and satirical angle on the pop zeitgeist. His first proper gig was a residency on BBC Radio 4’s Kaleidoscope, but it was his live style as a stand-up poet that brought him to the attention of the music industry.
Having signed a deal in 1995 with Herb Albert and Jerry Moss’s new label Almo Sounds, Murray was put together with the band Morcheeba to record their now legendary trip-hop version of Young’s poem Simply Everyone’s Taking Cocaine.
Producer Markus Dravs, whose credits include Brian Eno’s Nerve Net and Björk’s Homogenic, was drafted in to produce Murray’s first studio album, with instrumental accompaniment supplied by guests ranging from electro-punk outfit Shriekback to folk artists Steafán Hannigan and Oscar O’Lochlainn.
Soon after this, Murray was given his own series on MTV USA, recording a series of short films for the American market.
BBC Two coverage of his appearance at Glastonbury moved his profile higher ... and as the press caught wind that he had signed an unprecedented million-pound-plus record deal with EMI UK, he became a headline international media story.
Highlights of the ensuing years included a BBC Two television special, Vice and Verse, a book deal with Transworld Publishers for Casual Sex and Other Verse (1997), a writer/performer role in a high budget advertising campaign for Virgin Atlantic and a role as “Gallows Poet” in the cult classic movie Plunkett & Macleane.
He toured with The Pet Shop Boys, The Pretenders, Julian Cope and Morcheeba, played the main stages of numerous pop festivals including Glastonbury, Phoenix and T In The Park, and released three studio albums, working with Shriekback, Brix Smith, Martin Chambers (The Pretenders), Jonathan Perkins (Dave Stewart And The Spiritual Cowboys), multi-Platinum producer Chris Thomas and Jools Holland. Territories in which his work has been released include Italy, Holland, Germany and USA.
In 2002, Mark Rylance, then artistic director of Shakespeare’s Globe, commissioned Young to write a prologue to the stage adaptation of Lucius Apuleius’ mock-epic Latin novel The Golden Ass, and a poem commemorating the theatre’s relocation to its current home.
Under the auspices of Brunel University’s iF-festival, Young was commissioned to write a series of poems for composer Peter Wiegold’s Damn Braces, inspired by William Blake’s The Marriage of Heaven and Hell. The piece had its London debut in 2005 as part of Hot – An Infernal Cabaret, a collaborative project created by Young with Wiegold’s ensemble notes inégales.
Upcoming projects include a book of humourous children’s poetry, The Nine Dead Williams, and a memoir, provisionally entitled The Strange Case of the Million Pound Poet.
Murray's Official Website:
murraylachlanyoung.com
download to print murray's bio as a pdf file (3.3MB)